An Arab of Wady Fatima told Doughty, what the divine partition of the world was in the following words: “Two quarters Allah divided to the children of Adam, the third part He gave to Gog and Magog, a manikin people, parted from us by a wall, which they shall overskip in the latter days; and then will they overrun the world. Of their kindred be the gross Turks and the misbelieving Persians; but you, the Engleys are of the good kind with us. The fourth part of the world is called Roba’-el-Khali, the empty quarter.” Doughty adds, “I never found any Arabian who had aught to tell, even by hearsay, of that dreadful country. Haply it is Nefud, with quicksands, which might be entered into and even passed with milch dromedaries in the spring weeks. Now my health failed me; otherwise I had sought to unriddle that enigma.” It still awaits solution. In Oman they say it is only twenty-seven days’ caravan march overland to Mecca right through the desert; perhaps from the Oman highlands one could more easily penetrate into the unknown and get safely to Riad if not to Yemen. Nejran, celebrated as an ancient Christian province of Arabia and sacred by the blood of martyrs, lies north of Yemen and east of the Asir country. Together with the Dauasir-Wady region it forms a strip of territory about 300 miles long and 100 broad, well-watered and even more fertile than the best parts of Yemen[43]. The intrepid traveller, Halévy (1870) first visited this region from Yemen and found a large Jewish population in the southern part. He visited the towns Mahlaf, Rijlah and Karyet-el-Kabil, penetrated Wady Habuna but could not succeed in reaching Wady Dauasir. He describes the fertility of the Wadys and the extensive date-plantations of this part of Arabia in terms of greatest admiration. Ruins and inscriptions are plentiful. In Wady Dauasir the Arabs say that the palm-groves extend three dromedary-journeys. The people are all agricultural Arabs but, as in Oman, they live in continual feud and turmoil because of tribal jealousies and old quarrels.